WELCOME

We are honoured to be convening the 2022 COSA ASM in Brisbane at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from Wednesday 2 November to Friday 4 November 2022. Pre-conference workshops will be held on Tuesday 1 November (and we just might pause for “the race the stops the nation”).

This Brisbane conference is a long time coming – two years in fact. Just like everything else, the 2020 event that was originally planned for Brisbane was impacted by the pandemic and moved to a fully virtual conference, as was 2021. We know that just like us, you are all very eager to meet in person again, so we are planning for a face-to-face meeting. As always, we will keep a watchful eye on any changes to meeting and travel restrictions that might prevent us being together in person. If circumstances change and do not permit a F2F event, we will revert to a hybrid or virtual event as need be.

The theme for the 2022 COSA ASM is Equitable cancer care for all: Gender, identity, culture, geography, and disease should not matter.

We are claiming convenor privileges, as is often the case for COSA. The disease theme will have a strong focus on lung cancer - an area close to our hearts. We are keen to focus on health equity in terms of treatments and outcomes. This leads us to focus on vulnerable patients with poor outcomes such as regional and rural patients and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with cancer.

The COSA ASM last featured lung cancer in 2014, so we think it’s time. Especially when you consider the progress being made towards lung cancer screening and its impact in the era of advances in treatment such as immunotherapy.

The statistics for lung cancer are not favourable and this creates inequities. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death and the fifth most common cancer diagnosed in Australia excluding non-melanoma cancers. It is responsible for almost one in five cancer deaths in Australia. It was estimated that there would be 13,810 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed in Australia in 2021. The risk of being diagnosed with lung cancer in Australia by age 90 is 1 in 18, and the chance of surviving lung cancer for at least five years is only 19%. Despite recent advances in treatment more can be done to improve the care we give to patients with lung cancer which will be our focus of the ASM.

Together with a highly engaged program committee, and the teams at COSA and ASN Events, we are confident we will deliver another exciting and highly educational program.

We look forward to seeing you all in Brisbane this November.

2022 COSA ASM Co-convenors